We are on Scottish Rail heading toward Aviemore in the Cairngorms. The mountain range that Nan Shephard wrote about in The Living Mountain, one of those books about a place that has the power to transport you there. 

Dunkeld and Birnam
The next stop is Pitlochry
Please mind the gap
When alighting from this train.

We left from Waverly station, the only train station in the world to be named after a novel. I’m breathing deeply, trying to take it all in, each little station with its signs in English and Gaelic, its tiled roof and hanging baskets.